Official proceedings of the annual meeting: 1923

66

HEALTH

local circuit judge from a list of eligible county residents submitted by the state board.
In North Carolina the practice has been to appoint the county superintendent of schools
and the chairman of the county commissioners and one other person, while in Virginia
the practice is to prepare the list of eligibles submitted to the circuit judge from names
suggested by existing local organizations as the most interested and suitable people.
The North Carolina law vests the county board with advisory powers only. The
Virginia law vests the board with legal powers-the inauguration of the county superintendent and the direction of his work. Both laws make regular meetings of the board
mandatory, and the Virginia law provides that copies of the minutes of meetings must
be sent to the state board within three days after each meeting. The provisions of the
Virginia law would seem to be much more conducive to activity on the part of local
boards than that of North Carolina, where, as a matter of fact, the boards as now provided for are regarded as a weak spot in the law.
The North Carolina law makes no mention of co-operation, and consequently
the county board nor the county superintendent have any expressed concern with the
co-ordination of county agencies or with the division of responsibility between the
public and private agencies. The Virginia law does take this phase of community
organization into purview, first by the method of choosing and appointing the county
board, and by providing that the superintendent shall exercise his powers and duties
"under the supervision, control, and direction of such local board and in co-operation
with other public and private agencies." It is stated as one of the duties of the board
"to foster co-operation and intelligent division of work between all public and private
charitable and social agencies in the county or city to the end that public resources and
charitable donations may be conserved and the needs of the county or city be adequately cared for." An examination of all the county welfare laws and their administration indicates an appreciation of two principles enunciated by committees of the
Country Life Conference on Rural Social Service as basic, the enlistment of local leadership and control, and the employment of an executive of experience and vision.
The fourth effort to extend social work to rural communities is represented by
Red Cross chapters situated in rural communities which, under conditions prescribed
by the national organization, extended their work to civilian families. This will be
further discussed later.
All rural work faces many handicaps that do not exist in the city, and chiefly
it faces the absence of the idea of progressive social betterment, which is gradually if
unconsciously spreading in the cities. Again it confronts the indifference to human
values such as exists between aliens or distinct upper and lower classes. We have in
mind the cropper tenant and the Negroes of the South and Southwest among whom
there are still almost utterly unmet pioneer health and social needs.
Inadequate finances is another handicap to rural health and social work. Subsidies have been associated with most that has been done so far, and in our judgment
will continue to be necessary for some time to come within practically every county
in some sections, at least during a demonstration period. These subsidies in the past
have not taken into consideration as soundly as they should local education and
participation. They have been conditioned too largely upon financial participation
through the public authority, and such participation only.
It would seem that the opportunity of the Red Cross to extend its home service to
civilians in rural communities should have received more encouragement and confi